Chapter 9

Nick tries to find mourners. Wolfsheim will not come. Gatsby's father does. Tom and Daisy have left town.

This chapter in five words

Almostnooneatfuneral

Hide these. Ask the class for their five. Then show them. Then play today's sentence.

The quotes

5 quotes in this chapter.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money

They break Myrtle. They break Gatsby. They leave. Money is the door they close behind them.

Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead

Gatsby's gangster friend will not come to the funeral. He says this like wisdom.

He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it

The lawn is Daisy's. The dream is already behind him. He does not know.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us

The light was a dock lamp. Gatsby made it a future. The future keeps moving away.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past

The last line. We row forward. The water takes us back.